I lit another cigarette, which in retrospect wasn't that smart of an idea, seeing as there were probably still traces of gasoline all over my charred canvases and notebooks. I picked up another one, it's edges black as night, angry and resentful towards its dumbass creator for burning it alive, and chucked it in a black trash bag.

Everything around me was scorched earth - literally and figuratively. My hands were coated in remnants of everything I destroyed, from my paintings to my life as a normal person.

"So who was she?"

Stella sipped on her bright pink smoothie and watched me from the deck.

"Who?" I rolled my eyes at her behind the lenses of my sunglasses. Sweat dotted my forehead as I dragged the trash bag over to the side of the house, but thinking back to the day before with AJ and running my hands all over her body in my dope sick daydreams made the heat feel like I was living on the sun.

"The girl who was just here yesterday," she spat incredulously. "You know, talked with her hands, long legs, way too pretty for you. That girl."

"She's helping me." I tried my best to sound bored, and I hoped the heat hid the redness I felt creeping up my cheeks.

"Helping you what?" Stella scoffed. "Helping you get in your pants?"

"No," I bit back, instantly regretting how defensive I sounded. I tried to reel myself back and took a deep breath. "I don't know why you think I'm some kind of charlatan or something, but it's not like that."

Even if I wanted it to be like that, she was made up of everything that was way too good in this world for me. Her body would reject me like I was a bad organ off the black market.

Stella was about to fire back when a white BMW pulled into our driveway and up to the side of the yard, its tires crunching over the unfinished gravel.

She sighed and shook her head. "In case you were wondering, that's why." She turned and retreated into the house.

Sage emerged from her car with her bug-eyed sunglasses covering almost her entire face, and she pulled at her jean jacket even though it was scorching hot out.

"What are you doing here?" I asked in a low voice, walking up to the creaky white gate that separated the driveway from the yard. She stayed on the other side, practically radiating with intensity.

"You weren't answering your phone," she said curtly, nostrils flaring. "I just...wanted to talk to you, that's all."

I patted the pockets of my shorts for my phone, but I must have left it in the shed. An anger boiled inside of me, like the fire I had started yesterday was still burning in my stomach. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize I had to be available at your every beck and call."

Sage blinked, and for a moment a look of surprise flashed over her features. I was almost as surprised at myself as she was, but it was quickly replaced with disdain.

"I see." She let out a sharp breath. "So that's it, then?"

"I don't follow," I shrugged.

Sage pinched her lips into a thin line, and I knew she was concocting something. I braced myself for an explosion. "Who was that girl you were with at the flower shop the other day?"

I couldn't hold back a coarse laugh. "Are you serious right now? Am I not allowed to talk to other girls? Is that a rule now?"

"Well, no..." She scrunched up her face again, all confused as if I was speaking another language. "I guess I just figured it was disrespectful to the girl you were actually with."

I thought she'd be the one to explode, but somehow, my fuse was the one that was lit. "With?  What does that even mean? You're the one who made it perfectly clear we were not in a relationship. So why does matter who else I talk to, or fuck for that matter?"

I had been so used to approaching everything in my life with apathy, anger tasted funny on my tongue, but god did it burn through my system like a shooting star. I felt good. I felt alive.

"Did you fuck her?" She kept her tone calculated but casual, balancing on the exact edge of her emotional spectrum. It took me a while, but I figured out she did that so she could react to how I reacted and turn her tone on a dime.

"So what if I did?"

Maybe it had only been in my dreams, but Sage didn't need to know that.

"Because that's fucked up." She whipped her sunglasses off and pointed them at me. "Why would you do that to me?"

For just a moment, hurt punctuated her words, but Sage knew how to keep her cool better than anyone I knew. She slipped her sunglasses back on, and the walls came back up.

I sighed and raked a hand through my hair that stuck together in sweaty clumps on my forehead. "You're right. It's fucked up."

Sage let out a satisfied sigh. "It's okay, I forgive you, but-"

"So I guess since I can only talk to one girl at a time, we won't be talking anymore."

It took me a moment to realize that those words had come out of my mouth. Sure, Sage and I had our "breaks," but they were more like bends. This felt like a real break, in the way a bone breaks - painful, messy, splintered - and I was the one that took the bat to it.

"What?" She hissed out. "You don't mean that."

I stiffened up and clenched my jaw until it throbbed. "No, I do."

"So that's it then?" Sage threw her arms in the air dramatically. "Just like that, we're finished because you say so?"

I clenched my jaw again. "How could we be finished, we haven't been anything since we were 18!"

Apathy? Didn't know him. I had reached hysteria, and it burned in my chest. Something pulsed through my veins. Something foreign, almost like a disease or a virus that didn't really belong there, and even though I thought I was going to be ill, it felt so damn right.

"Fine," she called over her shoulder as she walked back to her car. "But when this shit blows up in your face, don't come crawling back to me."

I watched her speed away and finally exhaled, leaning against the fence in a desperate attempt to catch my breath.

"Wow, that was amazing."

I whipped around to see my sister had resumed her spot on the deck, still sipping on her obnoxious pink smoothie.

"You little shit, were you eavesdropping? I should kick your ass," I barked at her.

She met my hostility with laughter. "Who cares? I'd kick my own ass if I didn't see that for myself."

Confrontation and I were not friends, and I was still jittering from my exchange with Sage. My nerves were firing on overdrive, and part of me wanted nothing more than an extra large Xanax and a nap, but the grimy mixture of paint and ashes on my hands was enough to stop me. At least for the time being.

I dragged myself up to the deck, and Stella flicked at my arm as I brushed past her. "Proud of you, bro. You did the right thing."

"Then why do I feel like I didn't?"

✗✗✗

Afternoon heat was in full force as I sat on the rooftop deck of Hunter's condo. I laid on my stomach on a lounge chair and watched Hunter chirp in Japanese into his phone. The sun burned my skin, but I was desperate for warmth after the chill Sage left me with. Hunter's mother Emaline was about as Southern Proper as anyone could be, all the way down to the drawling y'alls and the sweet tea she brought us. To this day I have no idea how she produced Hunter.

She was also one of the only people in town who didn't treat me like a head case. I'd known her for so long, part of me felt like she just clung to the 12-year-old version of me, with dirty skinned knees and braces who needed the crust cut off of his peanut butter sandwich after school, refusing to see the mess I had become. Regardless, she made the best damn sweet tea. Check off another thing I was probably addicted to.

"You put sunscreen on?" she asked me as she set a glass down on the plastic white table next to my lounge chair. Little rivers of perspiration ran down the glass and collected in little pools on the table.

"Of course." I squinted up at her, and she fixed me with an amused grin, her teeth brilliant white against her darker skin. She then glanced over at Hunter, still engrossed in his phone call.

"Hunter Elias Gadsen, it's rude to be doing business when you have company," she snapped.

"Mom, I'm on the phone," Hunter groaned.

She swatted at him with a rolled up Good Housekeeping magazine. "Exactly!"

She turned her attention back to me and sighed. "Keep him out of trouble, please."

I chuckled. "No promises."

"Fucking idiots," he grumbled as he hung up and dropped the phone beside him. He picked up his sweet tea and took a long slurp. "I'm trying to order new parts for the Robotics team at Stanford but these guys are acting like I'm asking them to sell their souls, not a couple of microchips. They'll come crawling back, they always do."

I cringed thinking about Sage's last words to me earlier that morning.

"I gotta tell you something." I rolled over onto my back and lit another cigarette, taking a long, heaving drag as if it would kill me before I spoke again. "I told Sage we were done this morning."

"Thank goodness," Hunter sighed out. "What happened?"

"I don't know," I moaned. "I just sort of blacked out and flipped out at her about how we weren't really together so I could fuck who I wanted." I pulled at the frayed strings of my old Nike basketball shorts. "I don't really know why I did it."

"I do," Hunter quipped. "Because she's rotten. She's like a fucking virus, and every time she'd touch you she would infect you with her bullshit. Don't you dare feel an ounce of guilt for what you did."

"I don't feel guilty," I mumbled. "I'm just...I'm tired of feeling like an asshole about everything. Even when I think I'm making the right decision. I don't wanna be this person anymore."

"Baby steps," Hunter shrugged. "Dragging your toxic ex's ass to the curb is a start. So wait, did you actually fuck AJ last night or were you just saying that to piss Sage off?"

"I mean, I had a dope sick dream about fucking her. Does that count?"

He shook his head at me. "You better hope Sage doesn't hunt her down and bite her head off, praying mantis style."

"I'm pretty sure praying mantis bites the heads off of their mates." I died my cigarette out in the ashtray sitting on the creaky glass table beside our chairs, then immediately lit another one. "Besides, Sage is only confrontational with me. Cat fights aren't her thing."

Hunter clicked his tongue. "Guess you're lucky you made it out with your head then."

I rubbed at my neck, and the heat was starting to make me itchy.

"Anyway, speaking of mates." Hunter shifted in his chair, and there was an ounce of uncharacteristic uncertainty in his voice. "You remember Dominic?"

"Is that the guy whose toes were too long?"

Hunter groaned. "Yeah, well whatever, I guess we're sort of talking again. He asked me to go to 90s night at the roller rink downtown and..." he let out a heavy sigh. "I really don't want to go alone, okay?"

I shot him a grin. "Don't wanna go alone because you think he's gonna murder you, or don't wanna go alone because you're too apeshit crazy to just go on a date by yourself?"

Hunter flicked his straw at me. "No," he huffed out. "Regardless of my reasoning, I was just thinking maybe you could invite AJ? That way it wouldn't be so awkward."

"That would make things about a thousand times more awkward. She's not into me like that, and my brain turns to mush around her." I rolled back over onto my stomach and wiped my face on my towel. "I just told you I'm tired of being an asshole. That includes looking like an asshole in front of her."

"Man you're never gonna get it," Hunter groaned. "It's this Saturday. Just think about it, okay?"

That was the problem, I did think about it. About her. All day, every day, like a headache that pounded at my skull. I wasn't sure if I was going absolutely crazy, or if I was finally sane.